Bigotry and Self Awareness

@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0cm 0cm 0.0001pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }

If Twitter has done nothing else (and it hasn’t) then at least we can agree it has created an excellent forum for middle class people with left wing sensibilities to share links that will incite collective moral outrage.

 

This morning I logged on to find such a tweet, linking to an article by Melanie Phillips, a woman of whom I had never heard until today.  It transpires she writes for the Daily Mail and The Spectator, so the chances of our political views being aligned seem slim.

 

Sure enough, the link in question took me to a post on her blog in which she claims “schoolchildren are to be bombarded with homosexual references in maths, geography and ­science lessons as part of a Government-backed drive to promote the gay agenda.”

 

She concedes that this sounds mad, which shows a level of self-awareness you wouldn’t necessarily expect.  But having admitted this, she carries on - in a mad sort of way -  “in geography they will be told to consider why homosexuals move from the countryside to cities. In maths, they will be taught ­statistics through census ­findings about the number of ­homosexuals in the population.”

 

Really?  As someone who has worked on exam papers that are going to be used over the next couple of years, in both maths and geography, I’ve seen no such gratuitous crow-barring in of people’s sexuality.  Dumbing down, perhaps, but that’s another thing altogether.

 

And before you point out that the issue here ought not to be whether it’s happening but why should it be a problem, think about it for half a second.  School kids think kissing, farting and nose hair are amongst the top funniest things in the world.  Attempts to teach them gayness is OK via a dubious “why might Gary and Barry get less hassle for holding hands in London than in deepest Devon” is going to go straight over their heads.  Those who do pick up on it are likely to draw willies and handlebar moustaches on the inevitable line drawing put into the paper to illustrate Gary and Barry’s existence (because the imagination of the child is too stunted to visualize a couple of blokes standing next to one another), then forget all about it.

 

Course, Philips isn’t just concerned about gay lessons in school, because she has a larger point to discuss – TOTAL GAYIFICATION OF ALL LOCAL GOVERNMENT!  Yeah, that’s right.  She has evidence, too.  The cold, hard evidence of hearsay.

 

The case studies are twofold.  One is that of a B&B who refused to allow a gay couple to book a room together, in a very Christian way.  The other is the controversy over the appointment of an anti-gay rights campaigner to the Government’s Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. 

 

The former broke the law in what they did, whether Phillips likes it or not, whilst the latter recently published a paper in which he said fun things like, “while the majority of homosexuals are not involved in paedophilia, it is of grave concern that there is a disproportionately greater number of homosexuals among paedophiles and an overlap between the gay movement and the movement to make paedophilia acceptable.” 

 

If he’s going to print such inflammatory statements, it seems to me he should expect a bit of flack from the Beeb and The Observer.  And it doesn’t sound as though he particularly needs the Mail to fight his corner, either.  He’s done quite enough to make himself sound like a bigot, with the final nail in the coffin being the statement, “society is in danger of believing that if you are a Christian you are not fit for public office, or you are biased or a bigot.”

 

Stop making bigoted statements in the name of your faith, and society won’t say such things.  And anyway, I thought Christianity was supposed to be about turning the other cheek, and forgiveness, and trying to be nice to one another?

 

Apparently not.  Thanks for reiterating that point again, Twitter.